Corporate Social Irresponsibility and Consumers' Psychological Conflicts

Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 2018 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: 1,3, Otto Beisheim School of Management Vallendar, language: English, abstract: The three papers together follow the overarching research question how corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) and consumers' psychological conflicts are connected. First, Paper 1 describes a literature analysis, building the basis for Paper 2 and Paper 3, specifically, to understand the terminology and theoretical properties surrounding CSI as well as corporate social responsibility (CSR). The most important (abstract) ethics-related terms (e.g., CSR, green consumption, sustainability) used in the marketing ethics literature are therefore examined. The question which terms are used to which extent in influential marketing journals and how they relate to each other constitutes the basic research question of Paper 1 ('Contemporary Usage of Marketing Ethics Terminology: A Concept Analysis'). Second, Paper 2 ('Fooling Yourself: The Role of Internal Defense Mechanisms in Unsustainable Consumption Behavior') then exploratory addresses the role of consumers' inner conflicts in the field of unsustainable consumption behavior - and in case of their indirect support of CSI behavior - by means of 20 in-depth interviews. Third, Paper 3 ('Cling Together, Swing Together? Corporate Social Irresponsibility: Do Consumers Feel Accountable for It?') experimentally investigates the specific causal relationships of particular consumer conflicts on the basis of their perceived degree of moral responsibility.